Toby Harnden was the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC, from 2006 to 2011. Click here for Toby's website. Follow him on Twitter here @tobyharnden and on Facebook here. He is the author of the bestselling book Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story Britain's War in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama had fling with tv star?

Full coverage of the US elections 2008Casting her eyes over the headline "Black senator had affair with famous television host", Hillary Clinton might have thought it was the moment she'd been waiting for. Barack Obama, who has portrayed himself as the ultimate family man, caught in bed with a tv celeb? Katie Couric? Oprah Winfrey? Rosie O'Donnell?! Even if he survived more than 10 minutes at the hands of his wife Michelle (wouldn't bet on that), surely the super-delegates would desert Obama en masse.Former ABC news anchor Barbara Walters

Alas for poor Hillary, the black senator in question was not Barack Obama but Senator Ed Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts who served from 1967 to 1979. John Sears, a former Massachusetts state party chairman, described him as "the Barack Obama of that day". Not good enough for Hillary, I'm afraid she needed the Real McCoy. The tv host was Barbara Walters, who for a reason probably not entirely unconnected to seeking publicity for her new memoir "Audition", decided to spill the beans about her 1970s fling while holding hands with Oprah on her show. Pretty tacky, huh?

Yep. Well, first of all, the "affair" itself is no big deal. Walters was separated from her second husband at the time while Brooke was separated from his first wife. Second, Brooke is now remarried and 88 years old while Walters is 78. Do we really need to know what these oldsters were getting up to 35 years ago? And third, Walters seems to be trading on the tired old supposed taboo of sex between a black man and a white woman.

According to the "Reliable Source" column in "The Washington Post, which obtained an early copy of the book, Walters writes thatÂ "Ed Brooke was simply the most attractive, sexiest, funniest, charming, and impossible man." He used to joke that "I was the oldest woman he had ever been attracted to" while Walters, who was "excited, fascinated, intrigued and infatuated" was tempted to respond: "Oh yeah? Well, you are the blackest man I have ever been with." Classy line, eh?

Walters, who also got her leg over with Alan Greenspan and Senator John Warner,Â said she wrote about the romance because "it was a very important one in my life". Brooke is probably not best pleased. In 1978, when he was being panned for details of his divorce settlement, he said at a press conference: "I cannot equate the right of the public to know with the right of the media to revel. I cannot believe that every bureau drawer, every clothes closet, should be a subject of heartless headlines."